Wedder

I am very glad of the opportunity of saying a few words in support of Professor Gokhle's plea for Sir greater assistance being given to female eduWilliam cation in India. I would especially ask the burn, M.P. Government to give more active support still, both financial and moral, to this great cause. My reason for this is that female education in India has special needs, and there are special difficulties attending it. I think it has been said by someone that girls' education is two generations behind boys' education, and that is a very serious drawback to social life in India. And, as has also been pointed out, the difficulties in the way are very great on account of the customs which have been enforced upon the Hindoo people during the dark and unfortunate ages through which they have passed since the golden age of Aryan civilisation to which reference has been made. Reference has also been made to the date of 1854, when the great Despatch of Sir Charles Wood was sent out to India. In that despatch the responsibility of the Government was fully recognised. It was not only recognised with regard to female education, but Sir Charles Wood actually said that female education was more important than male education. I would just quote the words he used. He said: "Through female education a far greater proportional impulse is imparted to the education and moral tone of the people than by the education of men,' and in support of those views he addressed this despatch to the Government of India, in which he said that he approved a frank and cordial support being given to the cause of female education. Then the next important date is 1882, when Lord Ripon appointed the Education Commission, presided over by my gifted friend, Sir William Hunter.

The report of that Commission recommended that active support should be given and steps taken to promote female education. Of course, it has always been recognised that in a cause like this very much must depend upon the people themselves; and especially upon the women themselves; and I am glad to say that very shortly after the Report of this Education Commission was issued a very important movement was commenced in the city of Poona, which in educational matters takes very much the lead throughout India. A society exists there, an Indian female education society, the name of which is the 'Arya Mahila Sama.' This society met in 1884, nearly one hundred ladies being present, and they passed a resolution calling upon their male relatives to take active steps for the higher education of women. In accordance with this invitation, a very important meeting was held in the town hall at Poona, and stirring addresses were given by Mr. Justice Ranade (to whom reference has been made), by the late Mr. Pandit, who was the pioneer in many respects of female education in Bombay, and by Dr. Bhandarkar, a learned professor of Sanscrit in the Deccan College. I remember very well what Dr. Bhandarkar said, referring to that golden age of Aryan civilisation of which we have already heard: he said that in those days the wife was the companion and friend of her husband, the partner in his joys and in his worldly duties; and he quoted a very beautiful passage from the great Hindoo epic of the Mahabharat, in which the position of the wife is most beautifully described. I do not know any better description that I have ever read anywhere. This is the translation that he gave: A wife is the half of a man, and his most excellent friend; she is the foundation for him who seeks to be redeemed, a

friend in solitude, a father in matters of duty, and a mother in distress.' The outcome of this meeting was the formation of the female education society. On that occasion about a lakh of rupees was collected, and not long after the chief of Sangli, one of the Mahratta chiefs, gave a very beautiful site for this Poona High School for Girls, and now this has been established under the management of Miss Harford, a lady of special qualifications, who has won the love and affection of her pupils and the respect and regard of the whole Indian community.

The next date of importance was 1892, when an influential deputation waited upon Lord Kimberley, the Secretary of State for India, and a memorial was persented on that occasion signed by names which for educational and other purposes may be considered, I think, the very highest that could be obtained to any memorial on the subject. In answer to that memorial, asking for further support to female education, Lord Kimberley gave a very encouraging reply, and sent it to the Government of India with an expression of his concurrence in the views that were therein stated. I do not think the objects of female education could be better expressed than they were not long ago, when Lady Lansdowne, the wife of the Viceroy of India, distributed the prizes in the female school in Mysore. This school had been established by the Maharani, the wife of the lamented Maharajah of Mysore who did so very much for his country. In thanking Lady Lansdowne for distributing the prizes, the Prime Minister made the following remarks; he said that the school was started by Her Highness the Maharani in 1882, not for the purpose of qualifying women to tunnel mountains, or to make laws, or to make money, but to make them

good directors of home power-a power which we all know it is beyond our means to keep from them, and which they exercise upon us when ignorant with all the powers of a despot, but which, when they are enlightened, they use most beneficially, as our merciful Maharani has done in inducing his Highness the Maharajah to take such active and deep interest in the cause of education and regeneration of her sisters.' This, I think, is an Indian version of the saying that 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,' and we wish that the cradle shall be rocked by one who is wise and educated, and that the ruling of the world shall be in the right direction.

Mrs.

I am amused to find that the views I hold on this subject are very much the same as those of Professor Gokhle, only less pessimistic. Before we go Pheroze further, I must ask you to remember that, Thomas while education has been attended to in the West for several centuries, that of the East can be measured only by decades. Schools and training colleges are the growth not even of one cycle. However this may be, and paying attention to the fact that at one time, hundreds of years ago, when the world was younger, Eastern women were admitted into the field of learning and shared advantages equally with men, the Indian lady of to-day has in the majority of cases more to contend with than at first sight may appear. I am not going to make common cause with critics and pessimists who complain that Indian students of both sexes are not being educated in the true sense of the word, but that they master a few books and pass certain examinations but are incapable of original work. It strikes me that the fault of this lies in the system,

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one which has answered so far, but which wants to-day complete reorganisation. Leaving that matter to be attended to by those whose business it is, let us look at a few of the difficulties that beset the path of the Indian girl or woman who goes in for higher education. To begin with, she has not the necessary environment and atmosphere of culture in the home and family circle which are such important factors in the life of her Western sister. Her people may take a certain amount of interest in her studies, and be proud of her attainments, but they cannot enter into them because the studies are probably in English-a language unknown to the older generations-or if in the vernacular, they are on subjects utterly foreign and unintelligible. The girl student thus misses a great deal of sympathy, and finds she is more or less a unit, isolated from the rest of the household by reason of her books. Then, again, the Indian girl at a very early age contracts family ties, which bring with them burdens and responsibilities, leaving no learned leisure for adding to the infinitesimal stock acquired in the short space of school life between six and thirteen years of age. Besides the home atmosphere, the climate is against her. It fosters the passive and introspective, and positively kills the constructive power and energy required for original work. So much for environment. Then we have to get over the stumbling blocks created by the present curriculum; it is nearly all memory work, which by the laws of the inevitable ends in an atrophy of the mental powers. So many subjects fill up the time, that the living teacher has to give way before the dead book. The personal magnetism of the instructor cannot be exercised to draw out the latent energies of the instructed. But there is a